That’s not an admission of not enjoying my gay life today. I enjoy it very much, although I probably hide out more than living out loud. Still, I honestly believe I am not alone in recognizing the limits that exist within the complex reality of the community today. Our tropes have been remixed, rebranded, shaken, and stirred into such a vast panoply of categories, it is no wonder we have begun to lose our connection to each other. It’s the same phenomenon of having too much choice. And while we continue to be political firebrands, I often feel it is hard to a distinguishing voice, one that embraces the entire group. Perhaps that’s an impossible task.

When I was sorting out my gay identity in the mid-80s to 1990s, I will never forget the fear and desperation I felt over what I perceived as a paucity of role models and resources with which to understand being homosexual. Yes, I loved watching old movies, Paul Lynde and broke my mother’s kitten heels as a kid, pretending that I was Ann-Margret in “The Pleasure Seekers.” Yes, I fell under the sway of Gershwin & Porter, Bette Midler, Linda Ronstadt’s “What’s New” and Joan Rivers’ infamous comedy album “What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most?” I wasn’t led to all of these places. Most happened by osmosis. Some of my favorite teachers, who probably felt I needed a little encouragement, steered me ever so gently towards some cultural touchstones. Bottom line, it all felt right, just like the crushes I felt for Han Solo, Steve Austin and Thomas Magnum, private investigator. However, as I poured through the oeuvre of Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, and Jacqueline Susann, their depictions of homosexuality only left me titillated and confused. Man, I had questions and no one to turn to for answers.

As a teenager, you didn’t dare mention anything “gay” for fear of being ostracized or brutalized by the macho fucks who prowled the school hallways. Pretty much anything that did not look or sound like them meant “faggot.” Advanced vocabularies were a secret shame for us chubby, nascent homos. It was all closets, stereotypes, and slurs, as I am sure it was for many teenagers surviving the early 80s. It didn’t help that the HIV/AIDS crisis was being treated like a biblical pestilence by the media. But how else would you view the deaths of 40,000 people between 1981 and 1987 as anything but a genocide? Gomorrah was burning and it was devastating to hear from Anita Bryant and your own friends’ parents that being gay was the match that lit the fuse. Asserting your homosexuality at that time was not going to be like an ABC Afternoon School Special.

As I ventured to UCLA and beyond, I began to discover the resources with which to further define my gay identity. It was about being part of the “gay and lesbian” community, even if only the white gay male narrative was what clearly in focus. I still didn’t see myself in the growing media presence of gay men. Although, we have come a long way in that regard. In many ways, it still is a very white focus, regardless of the gender. Room for progress? Yes.

While I stayed firmly in the closet when it came to my parents, I had no problems letting my gay flag fly elsewhere. After UCLA became an educational Waterloo, CSU Long Beach can take credit for leading me to the artistry Armistead Maupin, Charles Busch, Reinaldo Arenas, David Leavitt, Manuel Puig, Larry Kramer, Keith Haring, Joe Orton, Harvey Fierstein, Pedro Almódovar and so much more. Once I landed at Paramount Studios as an intern, I hit the mother lode (and not that stalwart WeHo bar.) Several of the men I worked with in the studio’s National Theatrical Publicity department presented themselves as being incredibly secure with their bad ass gay selves. It was the first of many safe and illuminating havens I experienced in terms of associating with professionals who were out in the workplace. I was made aware just how gay men and women were the ones to make life and style synonymous terms. In this ACT UP era, it was time to understand we were “fierce.” More, I became hyper aware as to the debt attached to the attitude, parlance, and strength of the community, realities contributed by African-American, Latino and Asian queers. It all made for an intoxicating existence, especially when viewed on display at clubs Circus or Rosie’s or Jewel’s Catch One, where we embraced each other, fell in love on the hour and felt so invincible on the dance floor.

When I started writing this post on being “Basic,” it was meant to be another statement on dating today. That was before I sat down to watch the poignant if erratic “Strike a Pose” documentary. It is a “where are they now” piece that was produced by a Belgian-Dutch team, the film celebrated the 25th anniversary of “Madonna: Truth or Dare,” itself a cultural moment of considerable influence. The documentary regrouped seven of Madonna‘s unforgettable backup dancers, charting the course of their lives, trials, and considerable tribulations in the years since their co-starring in the Material Girl’s iconic 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. That zeitgeist moment, one that influenced so many young gay men and women, had a bittersweet impact on these men’s’ lives. How a defining cultural gift proved so challenging and heartbreaking for these incredibly talented men helped me broaden the context of what I wanted to say about this era of being “Basic.”

I was very much one of those fans who found refuge and pride in a movie theater during that summer of 1991. I instantly re-felt the impact of “Truth or Dare,” despite the difficulties faced by this group of men as chronicled by “Strike a Pose.” It was also like finding being a letter from a long-ago love. Witnessing these men, all nearing 50, still moving to their own music with purpose helped me understand the need to keep moving forward, of re-embracing my own strengths and colors. More, they inspired me to not feel adrift or isolated as a result of being 50 and gay in a world that still caters to the proverbial youthquake.

The first paragraphs on “Basic” were these:

When it comes to 21st century dating between men, two categories remain in play. The first group – or the Exceptionals – are men worth dating, but are most likely paired off or not interested in being a couple at all. This group does not include those who are in open relationships, a social phenomenon that is just more macho-induced “having your cake (or cock in this case) and eating, too. And then we have group two: The Basics. Oh, man.

Created by the internet, this constantly trending crowd thinks it’s redefining our world and perhaps they are with their throwback looks and sway back attitudes. They live for the now, even if they don’t know what that means. It isn’t just millennials, either. Basicdom is spreading to all age groups like a virus as social media swallows the rest of us whole. And what’s in between is a collective of damaged goods spouting mangled psychosexual manifestos and more. It is no longer men you date or men you don’t. What we have today are next level distrust and basic human disconnection.

I couldn’t continue down this path, one I’ve covered before and a Bombeckian take felt trite and unnecessary. Instead, I wanted to focus on how unfunny being labeled “basic” is to those who wield it as a joke or a tone-deaf insult.

While I applaud how millennials have turned up the dialogue to address and give names to the many facets of out and/or queer life, they are still working on variations of a theme long-established. I don’t think today’s young gay men quite understand the debt they owe previous generations, their lives, struggles, deaths and everything in between. Gay is a living, breathing creature, one that can decide the color of its plumage without a care in the world. Hide it, suppress it, oppress it, this creature will fight its way forward to be seen and with even greater radiance. A context to our present is missing today, a respect for history and the sacrifices made for us all to be able to say, “Sissy that walk.”

You will find nothing “basic” about being gay, now or ever. But it pisses me off that we are quick to diminish someone for not possessing whatever trend or ideology that makes them “interesting” or “worth devoting time to” in this world. We all can’t look like refugees from the Electric Company or Romper Room. More, we can’t let striking a series of selfie poses, drinks up and duck lips be what defines our sexual freedom!

We all will get older. We all will find how our experiences can impact the future if take our narcissism out of the equation. How we dare shame those who are poz or act like PrEP is the golden bullet that will keep us young and fuckable. How dare we ignore those who choose a unique brand of queer, or want to unleash their true gender identity, are older or chubbier or a different color or creed? Bad enough religious zealots want us dead, still! We cannot castigate or diminish our own brothers and sisters. Not now.

Homosexuality is a reality that was never about a life style choice because it sparks to life in our very DNA. We should remix “basic” and take the dialogue back to basics when we were all vital human beings living life on our terms: compassionate, honorable, forward thinking and positively sexy.

It was the summer of 1978 and I was in Mexico City. Dad had left me and my sister Lil in the care of his family. His parting wish was that we not only get to know all of our aunts, uncles, and cousins but that we learn Spanish and understand what it meant to be part of two cultures.

In the years since that legendary visit, the lessons learned continue to fill me with pride. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been at odds with my American and Mexican identities in the years, but at 50, I am glad to be that perfect mollete of American & Mexican ingredients. Back to 1978…

I was already a voracious reader and I brought along quite a few books to help me deal with the shyness that was still my want at that age. As the weeks went by, my shyness lessened, but I had my moments. One weekend, Tía Beba and Tío Pio headed to their ranch in Celaya, Guanajuato. They were this amazing duo, a matriarch and patriarch culled straight out of Tennessee Williams by way of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She was fair, blonde and every inch a Ms. DuBois. He was dark, silver-haired and a caballero from an era long passed. Their passing left a gaping hole that swallowed the entire family alive in the end, but that’s another story left to be told in the future.

I didn’t want to go to the ranch that day. I preferred to be left alone in the hotel we were staying at outside the property since construction was still shaping up the main house. For whatever reason, I chose to read my book, a novelization of the NBC mini-series “Holocaust,” in the lobby. I’d seen the series earlier that year and the novel was no less vivid or engrossing. I was so immersed in the book, feeling this overwhelming horror and sadness over the plight of the Weiss family. That this happened in the 20th century scared me speechless.

As I continued reading author Gerald Green’s adaptation of his screenplay, the degrading atrocities experienced by European Jews tapped into my own burgeoning abilities of imagination and empathy at that age. I pondered, “What if that were me? What if that were my family? I felt a fear I did recognize. At that moment, the light fixture hanging from the ceiling chose to fall and shatter upon reaching the tiled floor. It only took seconds for me to get up and call my family to come get me. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.

Nearly 40 years later, I woke up on July 27 to feel a similar sense of fear and dread felt on a summer evening in Guanajuato. However, it didn’t leave me speechless. Quite the contrary, anger surged within me. We were still dissecting 45’s petty and bilious speech at the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree. The scorched Twittersphere and media landscape is still digesting Trump’s infamous decree that transgender men and women are barred from enlisting in the military. Imagine the cruel joke that is the trash fire known as the Trump Administration doubled down on further eroding the protections for the LGBTQ community:

“The Justice Department has filed court papers arguing that a major federal civil rights law does not protect employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation, taking a stand against a decision reached under President Barack Obama.

The department’s move to insert itself into a federal case in New York was an unusual example of top officials in Washington intervening in court in what is an important but essentially private dispute between a worker and his boss over gay rights issues.

“The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination,” the Justice Department said in a friend-of-the-court brief, citing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in the workplace based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. ‘It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.’

The department filed its brief on Wednesday, the same day President Trump announced on Twitter that transgender people would be banned from serving in the military, raising concerns among civil rights activists that the Trump administration was trying to undermine lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights won under previous administrations.” — From the New York Times article, published on July 27, 2017.

The Pentagon has no intention of changing its criteria on transgender enlisted officers just yet. The intervention sought by the White House and Department of Justice is also going to take the time to resolve and will be challenged in court. But Trump’s daily Twitter coffee and cigarette dump succeeds in playing to his support base of intolerant miscreants with such power, the message is too loud to ignore. That’s what strikes fear and anger is so many. It is being digested and accepted by those who want to see the LGBTQ lose its protections sectors of this American society seeking to blame the dreaded “Other” as their sources of woe.

Once he took office, Trump’s Orwellian desire to erase any and all achievements of President Barack Obama was just the start of his all-too obvious agenda of hate. The media still blasts his “achievements” with tongue in cheek, snide glee reserved for the second rate reality star that he is. Too many of the electronic and digital media sites are breathless in their constant, “Oooh. Look what he’s doing now!” If I wanted to watch a monkey throw shit out of his cage, I’ll go to the fucking zoo!

It’s infuriating, but not nearly as maddening as the lack of balls shown by the Democrats or the lack of concern from the Americans who DIDN’T vote for him. And how about the center ring of this circus manned by the Unholy Trinity of Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and, just added to the cast, Anthony Scaramucci?

When cabinet members take to giving interviews to The New Yorker and utter statements like “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” you have to wonder if this is really our new normal — more — is this the start of the fall of the Great American State? You have to ponder the “show” that is being carefully curated and unveiled every given day. Cock sucking statements issued by Scaramucci is just a distraction. The Boy Scout Jamboree rant is just a distraction. The real show is what’s happening in between, slices of tasty sandwich meats topped with savory cheese but only available to select few. It’s not designed to satisfy us all.

The cowardly acts perpetrated by this administration are tailor made with the skins of the LGBTQ community because of the bias that already exists against them. It doesn’t matter the race, color and creed because being gay/trans/cisgender strikes that chord of terror-fueled intolerance in many people. But what the rest of us need to realize is that being silent makes us complicit in the eroding of precious civil liberties. Don’t think for one moment that Trump’s wrath won’t include you at some point.

This era of complicity is shaping up to be the personification of “First they came…,” the legendary poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller, first published in 1947. Europeans, especially Germans, saw the signs of an imminent genocide at the hands of Adolf Hitler. In the end, over six million men, women, and children would lose their lives. Silence allowed scores of husbands, wives, daughters, sons, fathers, mothers, doctors, artists, writers, scientists, all major contributors to society, to be eradicated without mercy. How many do you want to see claimed if Trump and his acolytes continue the brandish their brush of white wash on this country? Perhaps they won’t be murdered, but they will be stripped of their American identity, a crime in itself.

When I first started this essay, it was meant to be an examination of being gay, a piece inspired by the month of Pride festivals all over the country. Other life events took ownership of my thoughts, of course. Then this week of infamy started. It has dredged up a few unsavory realities about my earlier life. Like how I grappled with the desire of wanting to be white. I didn’t want to be treated differently because I wasn’t born into the tribe of Muffy & Trip. Or, how I stayed in the closet for as long as I did because for some being gay made you a carrier of AIDS, which was viewed as a punishment by those who felt it was “killing all the right people.”

We are born how we are born. Choice exists in what we learn in terms of how we live our lives. Men like Trump prey on those with weak minds with the isms that define the darker side of being human. It is when we are most distracted that the thieves storm the castle, and not always at night. It is here why stupidity has a habit of getting its way.

This is the time to be heard, not succumb to a herd mentality.

This is the time to be strong, not weakened by being divided. This is the time to be out and proud, not hidden or silenced.

This is the time to be a true American.

This is the time to have pride, in ourselves, in our nation, in being a human being.

“At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinkin’ I could never live without you by my side
Then I spent so many nights just thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along…”

— From “I Will Survive” by Freddie Perren & Dino Fekaris

Weight: 238.6 lbs.

Glucose Reading: 126

Lean for Life Program Loss: 24 lbs.

Mental State: Cautious Optimism

Today was my last regular visit to Lindora. I completed the 10-week Lean for Life program, designed to help me combat my Type-2 diabetes. The results? A more realistic loss of weight, a greatly improved series of glucose readings, lowered blood pressure and…? I’m not sure yet. What ever happens next is going to be on me, literally. And I am fuckin’ scared.

When I completed the Lindora program before, the results were always dramatic and euphoric. I was leaner, meaner and looking oh-so chic! (Ironically, that euphoria was also felt whenever I completed one of my late night eating binges of King Taco’s finest.) But like the fast food I returned to court with renewed gusto, the results were never satisfying or lasting. The weight would come back in due time, usually with a few MORE pounds tagging along for the next ride into the Depression City.

It was a truly vicious cycle, one that was particularly self-destructive by late 2015. Never before had the tyranny of food left me feeling alone and suicidal. Never before did I use food as something that could lead me to such a terrifying reality. That is the true power of addiction, when you feel you have no other recourse but to end your journey out of selfish, desperate fear. I don’t ever want to walk that plank again.

“Go on now, go. Walk out the door
Just turn around now ’cause you’re not welcome anymore
Weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye?
Did you think I’d crumble?
Did you think I’d lay down and die?”

Before I walked away from Lindora this AM, Nurse Maria asked me, “What are you going to do next?” I honestly didn’t have an answer for her. I’ve been dreaming of pizza, nachos and fried chicken of late. Dreaming, not plotting a course. I can’t go back to what I was in late January when I started the program. I can only move forward. Certain carbs, the ones we all love most, will always be a bad crowd for me. I still have to return to Dr. Jason to complete a new A1C panel. The reality is I may never stop taking them to keep the “Sugars” under control.

Wellness and healthier living are meant to be a marathon runs, not sprints. The instability of these last months has been my biggest obstacle. Family is enduring its own trials. Friends have suffered heart and other reminders of our mortality. The world is being used as target practice for Tomahawk missiles, both literal and figurative ones at that.

This revived “Me Generation” defies the selfish, narcissism of the 1970s. We were told to live in the “Now,” but all that’s done is make us think in terms of “hurry up” and “faster.” It is also not dictated by age anymore, nor does it heed the endless cries for living an “authentic life.” No one can seem to even wait for someone to make a turn in front of us, much less wait at a stop light. No one person’s life or time is more important than your own. So many an’t even respectfully slow the fuck down to avoid the red light you’re still going to break the law to cross. Let them all be damned since no one will take the fault for an error anymore, either. It takes everything in my being to just stop and breathe.

Breathe.

Pondering Nurse Maria’s question anew, I think I have an answer. I’m just going to take this a day at a time. When the mania rises, when I feel the least in control and need to reach for that thing that does me the most harm, I will stop, breathe and think. I will remind myself of the dark mental state that conspired to pull me out of this world out of fear.

It’s hard not to be awestruck at the photo of little me, the one that is the featured image of this entry. I look at the abject joy in those chubby little cheeks. I was happy to be in this strange world of ours. Somewhere along the way, I let that world turn a different shade, opting to hide from the very people and things that brought me so much happiness before.

My beautiful picture

I knew from a very young age I was a peculiar little gent, but it didn’t bother me. It has taken me almost 50 years to return to that point. The destination is a little hazy, but the signs leading me here are unmistakable. I now have a better understanding as to who I was supposed to be. Not total acceptance, mind you, but I am working towards that goal.

I’ve tried on so many different personas over the years, I confused myself, literally losing myself in this panicked desire to be all things to every being that’s ever been a part of my life. I see the folly of this today. It didn’t mean a thing, trying to please my way through this world. Friends came and went, just as lovers and co-workers did, too. The people that stayed demanded nothing of me, but I kept up appearances because I had a warped perception as to WHY they liked me in the first place.

Some people may have their own notion as to who is Jorge. Not George or Coco or MediaJor or The Peach or the Jor or any of the names that have defined me at various stages of my life. Jorge is something unique all unto himself. I am more than the Teflon brother who always gets what he wants, or the gay jester or the “Angry, Hungry, Fat, Gay Mexican” or the producer/interviewer or any of the things that are part of my persona. I am ALL of those things, though, the masculine and the feminine, sometimes even both at the same time. Instead of running away from all of this, I want to stop forcing myself to fit into a space that is not of my own design anymore. It is time to embrace all of me and stop pretending to be someone I’m not or capitulate to false perceptions.

As I start the next phase of improving my wellness and health, I am humbled by certain truths I’ve uncovered anew. I’ve used my family to fund my ridiculous efforts to cover my weak self up with material goods, to fill this insatiable void of my own making. It has been exceedingly unfair and I will not abuse their unconditional love in this manner anymore. This squandering of resources is on par with the awful food choices I’ve made for years. It’s all one big cover up and I am exposing this crime of emotional fraud once and for all. It didn’t make me happy in the least, not in the longterm anyway. That I ever thought I had the right to repay them with a departed soul is unforgivable.

One chapter of many is closing. This entry is the summation of a not so complex equation, a chronicle of a life that continues to be lived, despite its considerable contradictions and flaws. Samantha, whose embarking on a similar journey to end her habit of smoking, recently said to me, “The training wheels are coming off!” That is indeed true. As I steer myself into territory unknown, I know I won’t be alone. All I have to do to survive is…breathe.

I will survive.
Oh, as long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive.
I’ve got all my life to live.
I’ve got all my love to give.
And I’ll survive.

Hard to believe, but I am approaching the 10th and final week on my Lean for Life program. Time sure flies when you’re only eating egg white for dinner every damn night. To say that I have mixed feelings wouldn’t be me now, would it? The stagnation I feel has begun to set, anchoring me like a pair of cement shoes, albeit Italian ones. Not feeling so sparkly, either. Rather, I’ve been feeling rather morose of late. And I’m chasing that with healthy shots of: Tired. Annoyed. Fed up. I feel absolutely no joy about the progress I’ve made and that freaks me out.

Earlier this week, Nurse Maria told me the news. I’ve lost 6% of my body fat. The program usually sees patients lose between 2 to 3%. I should be elated. My clothes fit better. I sleep better. Luster has returned to my skin. I just look healthier, period. But all I felt was: nothing. Not like “A Chorus Line” nothing, but null and void. It is then I realized my body dysmorphia has taken a turn and I wondered if I’m always going to see myself as just another “fat boy,” no matter what I do to improve myself.

Last night, as I made my way to the Urth Cafféfor yet ANOTHER first date, I started thinking about which of my comfort food venues I was gonna hit hard the minute I end my daily visits to the clinic next week. That’s not good, because I can’t process those foods anymore. The end result is too dire to contemplate even half-orders or a singular visit every other month. But the truth is I feel stuck and emotionally constipated.

I’m literally going through the motions. I am missing something. A spark. Inspiration. Something to restore a sense of grace and a desire to stave off the demons of depression. Even the armor provided by the Lexapro is starting to show some dents and scratches. Is it my singleton status? Is it my approaching 50 in July? It could be that and more. All I know is that it’s as if covered wagons tented in mediocrity are circling me again. And don’t let me get started on the state of the American Union thanks to President Babyhands.

At times, I feel like I’m serving someone else’s dream. Other times, I get the sense that I’m just floating through life, buffeted from time to time by the obstacles I place in my own way. I just see “Fat Me” through it all because that all I’ve ever known, to be honest. It makes me think of that old Lynn Redgrave film from the 1960s, “Georgy Girl.” The reality of being the perennial schlub, no matter how much I may dress it up, inside remains the marshmallow center of “Fat Me.”

In the matter of being healthy, what you feel matters as much as much as how you choose to view your physical self. The only time I don’t succumb to any these dark swells on my mental shores is when I write. It shines a light on the boogeyman that is the childhood me, that pudgy soul who just wanted to be liked by the world.

As I reach this final week of the Lean for Life program, it is time to reflect on the road traveled before tackling the next journey. He needs to bid a quick retreat because it is when I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not, that’s when I use these fears to help me create and express myself with truth and clarity. It is only then I truly feel empowered and sane.

In no way am I ringing an alarm here. It’s part of the process of change. I knew that stripping away the layers of this unhealthy 40-something carcass was going to stir up some shit. These cycles of feeling woe and sorry for myself are destructive infidels determined to kick me off the course I’ve set for myself. I’m fighting back the best way I know how, this diary. It is my battleground to conquer. Each realization is the flag I will plant on the mountain I own, dammit. I just have to weather these moments of weakness to wrest the focus back onto what matters in this life.

Despite booking first class, luxury passage on the Love Train yesterday, I was a bit reluctant to get out of bed this morning. Maybe it is the fear of knowing what democratic pillar #President Babyhands was going to decimate next. Perhaps it is the effects of four protein days messing with my head. I wanted to write some pithy little riff on how Lindora protein days are a privileged, overfed person’s descent into hell, but I lost the desire. Instead, I’ll let this little clip of an otter happily chowing down take its place. That’s going to be me tomorrow when I get to switch back to a regular menu of poultry, fish, vegetables and fruits again.

The notion of living in a parallel universe is starting to grow in my brain. I have these moments where the only thing I can do is shake my head. I joke to myself that all those years of reading post-apocalyptic fiction, watching nuclear war films and those dystopian epicsof yore like “Logan’s Run” and “Soylent Green” are actually going to pay off! I’m ready for whatever happens next! Then this fear grows in the pit of my slowly shrinking stomach. I have to remain and fight back the fear of letting it spread further so I don’t just lock the door and never leave the house again. .

Today, #PresidentBabyhands basically unleashed a round of “Mextortion,” proposing a 20% tax on all Mexican imports. Comedian that I am, one thought that flashed in my mind was, “Since I am in the process of losing weight, this could be a very good thing!” But really, it is not. Crushing an economy because they won’t fund your windmill from hell, Don Quixote, is tyranny at its worst.

Political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz (of “La Cucaracha” fame) posted this image promoting a “California Resistance,” which is the lead photo of the diary entry. “Resist” is a powerful word for us all right now. It has taken root in my mind, from resisting the urges to consume things that can hurt me to resisting the urge to go full Howard Beale in public with rage. I can tell you this. I am losing one battle and it isn’t with food.

Restraint has never been a word I’ve been able to incorporate into my lexicon for living. Not as a kid, even less so as an adult. I am finally aware that “more” can kill. As we try to process the events of this week, more challenges will be brought to the American public in a way that will divide us and conquer other principles that must be defended to the bitter end. So, what does any of this have to do with a diet diary, you may ask? Plenty.

We are what we eat, people. And I am not going to subsist on a steady diet of lies and tyrannical chaos just because so many Americans hated having a black president for eight years. You ingest in trash food, you get toxic refuse that leaves your body in shock and prone to diseases that can kill you. The same applies to the Democratic process. We are what our elected officials represent. It is no coincidence that President Babyhands is an orange-colored menace. Cheetos are just as bad for me, too. Neither requires my attention to be healthy and strong, all the better to fight back.

“I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You’re so self satisfied I don’t need you
I’ve got to break free
God knows, God knows I want to break free…”

If my long-held fears were corporeal, I’d sing Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” to them at the top of my lungs. It is what you say to a lover who has kept you down for too long. The one who keeps you at arm’s length, the one who keeps you begging for a love that is on their terms and so not worth it.

The same applies when you’re locked in the grip of abject fear. Rejection. Failure. Unfriended. Unliked. Unbelievable.

For me, it is my connection to fear that has been my longest running romance. Time is slowing down in some ways and the quiet I’ve been experiencing of late is granting an audience to my inner thoughts with unsettling frequency.

I go to therapy twice a month, but it is more a stop gap measure than a real solution. Do I see the enormity of fear? Yes, its features have taken their full form now. It is me as a kid, seeking attention from those who did little to try to understand me. I find that my most painful struggle is that of finding a partner in this life that understands me. My inability to do so is starting to anchor me deeper into this toxic morass of depression.

Why isn’t it enough to trust myself again? Why is it so important to see myself in the eyes of someone else and not provide myself with the strength to pull myself out of this bog? Part of me wants to see fear take on depression in an epic battle royale, but that’s assuming I can be a bystander. They are both a huge part of who I am as a person. If anything, I’ve allowed them both to use ME as their boxing ring.

Since coming home from Spain, a palpable sense of loneliness as returned and creeped into my mind again. That vacation was supposed to wash away all that was troubling me. Instead, it only drudged up more of what ails me. I can’t allow myself to be washed away with it. As much as I love the ease and promise of stillness from slipping away unnoticed, the collateral damage would be too great. Running away from my personal ground zero is not the answer. But these six years of romantic drought and depression are starting to take their toll and the struggle to find some sort of peace is becoming a insurmountable.

Chaos. Uncertainty. Anger. Screaming. Rage. Optimism seems incapable to puncture through this era of disconnection and dischord. Writing the pain away helps. As to what I’m going to express next, I don’t know. But for the moment, I am going to keep shining a light on fear until I am able to run right into it and tackle it for good. I just need one good play, dammit. And break free…